Nothing could have been more piteous than the tone. It was laden with the remorse that only such a nature could feel for such a cause. Maxwell's hand touched her head tenderly. A variety of expressions crossed his face, then a sharp flash of decision.
"Dear! I think you ought to know—she has written to me."
Marcella sprang up. Face and neck flushed crimson. She threw him an uncertain look, the nostrils quivering.
"Will you show me the letter?"
He hesitated. On his first reading of it he had vowed to himself that she should never see it. But since her confessions had begun to make the matter clearer to him a moral weight had pressed upon him. She must realise her power, her responsibility! Moreover, they two, with conscience and good sense to guide them, had got to find a way out of this matter. He did not feel that he could hide the letter from her if there was to be common action and common understanding.
So he gave it to her.
She read it pacing up and down, unconscious sounds of pain and protest forcing themselves to her lips from time to time, which made it very difficult for him to stand quietly where he was. On that effusion of gall and bitterness poor Letty had spent her sleepless night. Every charge that malice could bring, every distortion that jealousy could apply to the simplest incident, every insinuation that, judged by her own standard, had seemed to her most likely to work upon a husband—Letty had crowded them all into the mean, ill-written letter—the letter of a shopgirl trying to rescue her young man from the clutches of a rival.
But every sentence in it was a stab to Marcella. When she had finished it she stood with it in her hand beside her writing-table, looking absently through the window, pale, and deep in thought. Maxwell watched her.
When her moment of consideration broke her look swept round to him.
"I shall go to her," she said simply. "I must see her!"